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3D Printers To Build Houses

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the spray-that-right-here dept.

gbjbaanb writes to point out an article in the Sunday Times describing two separate programs where robots are being developed to build houses. The Los Angeles project is farther along than the one in the UK, but the article provides more details on the techniques employed in the latter. Liquid concrete and gypsum will be sprayed from nozzles in a manner analogous to an inkjet printer. From the article: "The first prototype — a watertight shell of a two-story house built in 24 hours without a single builder on site — will be erected in California before April. The robots are rigged to a metal frame, enabling them to shuttle in three dimensions and assemble the structure of the house layer by layer. The sole foreman on site operates a computer programmed with the designer's plans... Inspired by the inkjet printer, the technology goes far beyond the techniques already used for prefabricated homes. 'This will remove all the limitations of traditional building,' said [an architect involved with the UK project]. 'Anything you can dream you can build.'"

6 of 305 comments (clear)

  1. Super old by Atario · · Score: 3, Informative
    119. Need a Home in a Hurry? Press Print
    Jun 29, 2004
    An oversize printer could speed up building construction.
    --
    "A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
  2. A bit short on links... by mindriot · · Score: 5, Informative

    A few links could of course have helped this article... I think contourcrafting.org seems to be more or less the right page for the California project. The videos and animations are quite worth seeing.

    For the Loughborough one, the closest I could come up with was Dr Soar's website...

  3. Homepage of the project by OeLeWaPpErKe · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://www.isi.edu/CRAFT/

    Much more details.

  4. Video's slashdotted by sucker_muts · · Score: 4, Informative

    ... but luckily youtube has a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r7r-qlKkUo

    --
    Dependency hell? => /bin/there/done/that
  5. Re:Brilliant news for the 3rd World by Calinous · · Score: 3, Informative

    Loans are allowed in Islam - taking interest from a loan is not.
          However, there are islamic banks that take no interest (taxes a loan in different ways), so even in the most islamic country you could take a loan from the most islamic bank

  6. Re:How do they do the roof? by gundersd · · Score: 3, Informative

    You aroused my curiosity, and it turns out that the video at http://www.isi.edu/craft/CC/Welcome_files/resource s/animation.html (thanks to mindriot for pointing this out) shows a simple solution. For those on limited bandwidth connections, the basic gist of it is that the floor & walls are "printed" and then a separate robot arm picks up some flat (almost I-beam looking things) that it lays across the roof. The I-beams are then "printed" over to hold them in place & seal them.